March 12, 2007

March
22 - Civil Rights Documentary “Freedom’s Call"; - UNC Asheville
will host a screening of the civil rights documentary “Freedom’s Call” at 6:30
p.m. Thursday, March 22, in UNC Asheville's Humanities Lecture Hall. The noted
film chronicles the experiences of two pioneering African-American journalists
who documented the civil rights movement. A panel discussion with filmmaker
Richard Breyer and local journalists will follow the screening. The event is
free and open to the public; a $5 donation will be suggested at the door. All
proceeds will benefit the "I Have a Dream Foundation," which helps
underserved children reach their educational and career goals by providing
long-term mentoring and tutoring.

March 10, 2007

Building
Bridges is a community-based organization that facilitates nine-week dialogues
twice a year on Going
Beyond Racism Through Understanding and Respect. The next session is
September 11, 2007 - November 6, 2007, on Tuesday evenings from 7-9pm. The
program will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, 1 Edwin Place, Asheville, NC 28801.

The
registration fee is $20. For more information, you may go to the website: www.buildingbridges-asheville.org
or call 828-777-4585. - submitted by Jacquelyn Hallum

March 09, 2007

I wrote an opinion piece for the March 1, 2007, Asheville Citizen-Times that you might find of interest, if you haven't seen it.
Entitled, "Time to stop creating tame solutions for wicked problems," it
addresses the complexity of racism as a societal issue and suggests that our
approaches are not working. You can find it here, if it is of interest.

A
response appears in today's "letters to the editor" of the AC-T that essentially
posits the viewpoint that blacks perpetuate racism: "blacks are the worst
offenders when it comes to staging phony hate crimes...to generate sympathy for
their racial agenda."

I have written and sent to the AC-T a response to this letter writer -
if you also find his comments objectionable, perhaps you might want to write a response as well.

My response, sent to the AC-T on
3/9/07:

I am responding to Tom Shuford's recent letter (AC-T,
March 9, "Take racism reports with a grain of salt until verified") regarding my
editorial, "Time to stop creating tame solutions for wicked problems," (AC-T,
March 1).Always
willing to take advice from others - if well-grounded - I find myself in the
awkward position of asking Mr. Shuford to take his own advice.

I wrote
that an HR director asked me to help with a situation involving employees
hanging nooses from their African-American coworkers' lockers. Mr. Shuford
suggests that such incidents should be verified (they were), quoting
"independent scholar" Laird Wilcox as saying that "blacks stage hate crimes to
generate sympathy for their racial agenda." Whether consciously or
unconsciously, Mr. Shuford has chosen unvetted sources that themselves require
verification.

It is true that we live in a world in which we can choose
to get our news solely from sources that reinforce our world views. I would find
it amusing - were it not so dangerous - that Mr. Shuford has chosen such
blatantly biased "reports" on which to base his suggestion, sources that clearly
support his own racial agenda and border on hate speech
themselves.

May I suggest that Mr. Shuford take racism hoax
reports with a grain of salt until verified, that he follow his own advice to
“get specifics—names, place, date, evidence” and, in his case, to check the
veracity and obvious bias of his sources.

Jacquelyn Hallum has sent this response to Mr. Shuford:

In response to "Take
racism reports with a grain of salt until verified, " by Tom Shuford,
published March 9, 2007 12:15 am. A simple mantra that I choose to share
is," If people knew better they would do better." In order to
eradicate the fears and the perpetual arrogance that generally accompanies
racism, I'd like to recommend a program developed by a wonderful
community-based organization called Building Bridges. This organization
facilitates a nine-week dialogue on Going Beyond Racism: Through Understanding and Respect.
The next session is September 11, 2007 - November 6, 2007,
on Tuesday evenings - 7pm - 9pm. The program will be located at the Unitarian
Universalist Church of Asheville, 1 Edwin Place, Asheville, NC 28801. The
registration fee is $20. For more information, you may go to the website: www.buildingbridges-asheville.org
or call 828-777-4585. I have verified the specifics - names, place, date, and
evidence, etc.

I'd also like to share this quote,
"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the
heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow
there, firm as weeds among stones.
-Charlotte Bronte
1816-1855

March 01, 2007

“I’m 46,” the man wrote. “It’s
hard for me to imagine that only 50 years ago prejudice was so rampant. I feel
good about the progress that’s been made, but I also know that prejudice is
still alive: stagnant and dormant in some people and ‘in your face’ in
others. As a modern civil people, we must continue to fight prejudice, stand up
against intolerance, and educate our youth about the importance of
acceptance.”

“Where are the heroes of today?”
he continued. “We need another Rosa Parks. We need another Martin Luther King.
We need to do a lot more than what we have been doing.”

What we actually need, I replied
quietly, are more white people who are willing to be civil rights heroes.

We need white people to be as
outraged about racism as people of color are. We need white people to realize
that racism is not a black issue—it’s a white issue. We need white people to
refuse to participate in a system that privileges them over fellow human beings.
We need white people to actively, visibly, and publicly examine their own role
in perpetuating racism in subtle and unconscious ways, acknowledge and own their
part in the problem, verbalize the unearned privileges that accrue to them
simply because of their skin color, and demand those same privileges for people
of color.

Fighting racism isn’t only the
job of people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. The next generation of
civil rights activists in this nation must be white people who realize that
winning this fight will be the result of individual, daily actions on their
part, not grand pronouncements and history month celebrations.

In “The Color of Fear,” a
remarkable film shown during the community dialogue program, Building Bridges, a
young African-American man named Victor puts it this way: “Most of the lethal racism we face isn’t the
KKK burning crosses; it comes from people who experience themselves as decent
folk, moral churchgoers.” “Racism is so deep.” he continues, “that you don’t
think about it. It is insidious. It is in the very air that you breathe. White
people don’t talk about what it is to be white; they talk about the human
experience. Because in the U.S., white is human.”

Some say we should live in a
colorblind world—that we are all human, after all. But if we are unable to see
race, we cannot see racism—and denial is not a strategy. After hearing Victor’s
story in “The Color of Fear,” a white man named David asks, “How can I help
you?” “Help me by understanding yourself and the invisible protection you have
because of your color,” is the reply. There can be no progress on the issue of
racism, Victor explains, “unless you’re willing to be changed by my experience
as much as I’m changed every day by yours.”

As long as we wait for national
heroes to emerge, nothing will change. As long as we relegate the solution to
the very people we’ve oppressed in the first place, nothing will change. Unless
we wake up every morning determined to eliminate racism even when that work is
difficult, nothing will change. Many times, racism has existed around me, but I
didn’t notice—because it didn’t affect me. It’s this subtle racism we must
fight. And to fight it, we must see it, not minimize it.

If Rosa Parks had waited for a
Bi-Partisan Task Force on Unilateral Bus Seating, she’d still be standing on
that bus. Sometimes, we just need to act. But let’s not confuse movement with
action. Being a strong white ally doesn’t mean that we should take over, assume
we know what is best for people of color, or ask them to speak for their people.
Rather, it means that we should find out about people of color by listening to
their stories, teach our children about racism, talk to other white people about
racism, interrupt racist jokes or comments, and stand by people of color—not
just when it’s easy or convenient, but always.

As Nelson Mandela once said: “your smallness will not save the world.” To
end racism, we must make bold strokes and be active anti-racists. We must
acknowledge our unearned privileges, accept our own racism, and own this problem
ourselves, each individual one of us.

The police officer who
fingerprinted Rosa Parks after that fateful bus ride was named Drue Lackey. When
asked to comment on Parks’ death, Lackey simply said that he had no problem with
black people and that he was just doing his job. As long as we “just do our
jobs,” racism will prevail.

Dr. Warschauer
has written seven books, including Technology and Social Inclusion:
Rethinking the Digital Divide, which discusses “haves” and “have-nots” and
how differential access to information technologies contributes to economic
stratification.

Michelle Gibson
has not written any books. In fact, she is one of those “have-nots” about which
Dr. Warschauer writes.

Dr. Warschauer is
Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California, Irvine, and has also taught at the University of Hawaii, Moscow LinguisticUniversity, and Charles University in Prague.

Michelle Gibson works
several jobs cleaning up human waste in nursing homes.

Dr. Warschauer's research focuses on the integration of information and
communication technologies (ICT); the impact of ICT on literacy; and the
relationship of ICT to institutional reform.

Michelle
Gibson’s research focuses on having enough money to feed her children.

As noted on his website, Dr. Warschauer's personal interests include
“bicycling, chess, water sports, and, of course, his family.”

Homeless,
Michelle Gibson’s personal interests include finding a place for her family to
live.

Dr. Warschauer
is white.

Michelle
Gibson is black.

On August
8, 2003,
Dr. Warschauer drove to work, forgetting that his son Michael was in the car.

On May
22, 2005,
Michelle Gibson didn’t have a babysitter and did the only thing she knew to do:
she left her son Devin in the car as she started her 16-hour shift at Mountain Trace Nursing Center.

What do Dr.
Warschauer and Michelle Gibson have in common? They both killed their children.
And that’s where the similarity ends.

Dr. Warschauer
intended to drop his 10-month-old son at day care before going to work.
Instead, he drove to his office and parked, leaving Mikey sleeping in his car
seat in 80 degree weather. As Warschauer walked back from lunch, he spotted
paramedics in the parking lot. Mikey was dead from heat stroke.

When Michelle Gibson
checked on her 8-year-old son, he was also dead.

Prosecutors
did not press charges against Dr. Warschauer, ruling the death accidental and
his loss punishment enough. There was no doubt, they said, that Dr. Warschauer
adored Mikey.

Michelle
Gibson was charged with second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and felony
child abuse. She and her grief remain in Jackson County Jail on a $100,000
bond. Why are we so quick to question whether she, like Warschauer, adored her
son?

And why such
disparity in treatment? Both babies are irretrievably dead. One parent was
well-off, well-regarded, and white; the other poor, anonymous, and black. Both
were sleep deprived. Both made disastrous judgments.

These
deaths are a horrible tragedy. Is one criminal and one not? I don’t know. But I
wonder why we are so quick to judge Michelle Gibson and so fast to pardon Dr.
Warschauer. Didn’t both parents, both working hard and both exhausted, neglect
their children? Is Michelle Gibson’s sorrow less sorrowful, her tragedy less
tragic, her poor judgment poorer? Does our dismissal of her also point to an
insidious pattern of privilege that disadvantages and even erases the
dark-skinned and the poor?

Young women of
color go missing in great numbers each year, yet our national attention is
riveted on wealthy, white women: Elizabeth Smart the harpist, Chandra Levy the
Capitol Hill intern, Jennifer Wilbanks the runaway bride. Why don’t we know the
names of Tamika Huston, Tyesha Bell, or Alexis Patterson? They are missing like
their white counterparts, but their names and stories are unknown. Why?

The
leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S.is
murder, disproportionately high for mothers of color, yet People magazine
focuses on Laci Peterson and Lori Hacking and not their dark-skinned
compatriots like Evelyn Hernandez, her pregnant torso also found in the San Francisco Bay.

Is it less important, less
newsworthy, less relevant to lose people of color? Are minority victims, in
effect, less human? Is their sorrow not as sorrowful, their tragedy not as
tragic?

We
tend to see people who are like us as three-dimensional, with detail and
specificity afforded them: for example, you know much more about Dr. Warschauer
than Michelle Gibson after reading this essay. Gibson remains one dimensional:
faceless, she is just one poor and homeless single parent among many without
the same level of specificity we give ourselves. She is the “other”; we can’t
see ourselves in her story. In creating that distance, we ignore and disregard
her, we de-humanize and erase her. We simply judge her.

Dr. Warschauer forgot Mikey because he was up late working
on a research paper and was exhausted, he said. We can see ourselves in that
story, we identify, we feel personally vulnerable: “if this smart, professional
man could forget, maybe I could, too.”

But we must not only see ourselves in Warschauer’s story.
We must also recognize part of ourselves in Gibson’s life, homeless and
exhausted from manual labor in 16-hour shifts, unable to find a way out,
without access to affordable childcare. We must not look away, rendering her
existence as undifferentiated and one-dimensional.

Michelle Gibson, like Mark Warschauer, is a
three-dimensional human being—not just a destitute, homeless, black woman with
poor judgment. And until we know her story and can see ourselves in it in the
same way we identify with Warschauer’s—until we can acknowledge that she has
the same hopes and dreams as we do, and until we are as transformed by her
experience as she is by trying to survive in our world—then she and others like
her will never get our full attention and they will never get justice.